Actors that seem to be Christians (that is, actors who are in fact portraying Christians) walking out to what we imagine are lions (we hear from the location they walk toward the recorded roar of lions, a sound that has even more of a “recorded feeling” attached to it than do the pictorial elements of the film, as if they had played a recording on the set rather than overdubbing it, in effect doubling the “recorded feeling”) in the Roman Coliseum in the movie Sign of The Cross: the first thing that occurs to me is that Christ would have avoided that situation (imagining the situation as real), I suppose meaning by this that Christ himself was not a “martyr”; the second thing that occurs to me is that Christ had in fact directed himself into the heart of exactly such a situation, I suppose meaning by this execution; the third thing that occurs to me is that, “forget walking to one’s death, one can’t even expose oneself emotionally”: Not walking to ones death, but walking to ones ego’s death, is what one can’t do. “In which coliseum does ones ego get fed to the lions?” is thought and “one is afraid of those lions” is thought.
“Could one get beyond the ego’s death one could probably get beyond or face the real and total kind (of death),” is thought, which is “the idea of having two bodies.” Afraid for the death of the exterior body. Instead of soul and body, body and body; or body and anti-body; or body and self-delusion, is thought. (Or adult body with a childish self-regard.) Maybe there’s a soul, too, but I can’t even think of that, or even of my body, because I’m thinking of this second one, this body which on the one hand is a sort of exo-shell and is, on the other hand, pretty much all that I think, and yet not essentially, maybe not remotely, what I “really am” — an enveloping delusion — as if my skin tried to think of my brain. “Can’t think of three if I can’t think of two or two if I can’t think of one,” thinks ones ego which is the first in thought but the last in essence or importance. Ego: the first in mind and last in thought which weeps not at feeling pain but that someone might afflict it with pain, weeps at thought and intention. (An adverse intention is cause for weeping, and maybe even he would not weep at actual pain, since the next layer down can be surprisingly tough and unfeeling.) “The ego is so divorced from the body it doesn’t even know there’s actual suffering, there is only the psychological kind,” is thought. (“So aware of shame it is unaware of life,” might be added.)
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